For many years, entities in the service industries have employed manual time sheet and billing systems as a way for service providers to record time spent on a work activity and thereafter be paid for the work. In a typical example, a contractor may submit to a potential client an estimate of the cost for a particular job in terms of time and materials. If the client reaches agreement with the contractor on the terms, the contractor's time can be recorded so that the client can review and approve the time spent by the contractor in performing the work. Typically, the contractor will write or type onto a timesheet the amount of time the contractor has worked over the course of the contract, usually on a per time unit basis (e.g., hours per day). Depending upon the length of the contract, the contractor might regularly submit aggregated time sheets covering a pre-determined period (e.g., one month) to the client for approval and payment. If the client approves the time spent by the contractor, the contractor can then draw up an invoice to provide to the client for payment. These manual systems suffer from numerous disadvantages.
Attempts have been made to automate the above procedure. However, previously known systems have inherent disadvantages. Preferred forms of the present invention seek to provide an automated system for managing the contract resourcing process from end-to-end that overcome one or more inherent disadvantages of previously known systems.